


because i loved him first

by watfordbird33



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Death (but not in story), F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-09 13:45:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 9,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10413522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: Ron looks at her, and she realizes it might be the first time she's said Harry's name in over two months."Well, Harry was the best of us," he says.She can't deny it. That's the trouble, really.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, I couldn't resist. Have a mess of a story with no plot that may lie unfinished forever.

“Tell me something.”

There’s a man standing behind her, swaying slightly. Blond and pointed and giving off an air of superiority so thick she can almost taste it.

“Malfoy,” she says, after a static second, and it really shouldn’t have taken her so long to recognize him.

“Weasel. Weasley. Tell me something.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you think you’re doing.”

He grabs her shoulder, and she stiffens. Her wand’s in her back pocket. She regrets it, the unattainability of it: Mad-Eye always said to keep it in her hand.

“ _Tell me something,_ ” he says again.

He’s been drinking--she can smell it on him, firewhiskey and something sharp and bitter--but his eyes are clear. Of course he holds his alcohol well. _Of course._

“Tell me about _Potter,_ ” he grits in her ear.

She closes her eyes and the pain rips through her and it’s everywhere. “He’s none of your business.”

“What happened to your golden destiny?”

She doesn't answer. Her hand slides from her front pocket down to her hip, searching for her wand, but his free hand closes over her wrist. His fingers are cold, and his laugh against her neck is breathy.

“I’m glad he’s gone,” he says.

“You're fucking insane.”

“I fuck quite nicely, actually. Or so I've been told.”

“You're drunk, Malfoy. Go home.”

He steps back from her, his smirk dropping. At least she won't have to curse him, or use the Muggle self-defense techniques she learned when she moved to London proper.

“Weasley,” he says. “Or Potter. God, I hope it's not Potter.”

“Weasley,” she says, shortly.

“You're a filthy blood-traitor, Weasley, but you look like a dream.”

“ _Go the fuck home._ ”

He laughs--turns--staggers. Catches himself against her. His blond hair brushes her cheek, and he smells of cigarettes and alcohol and too many late nights. He’s a mess: this boy, this close.

“Goodnight, Weasel,” he says, dropping a sloppy kiss on the top of her ear, and before she can hex him, he's wheeled around and set off down the street, until his burnt-out, wavering figure is swallowed by the night.

 

On her way home, she finds herself touching the top of her ear.

She yanks her hand down and casts an _Aguamenti_ and water jets everywhere and she scrubs at the soft cartilage, the invisible imprint of his lips, until her skin is red and stinging.

In a glittering jeweler’s window, she stares at herself. Her hair is black with water, hanging to her shoulders. She doesn’t look like anyone special, like a girl anyone would want, and it reassures her.

 

Ron’s waiting up for her when she gets back. He’s in flannel pajama bottoms and a Weasley sweater--pink, for the baby girl--and he’s amusing himself with his wand, shooting sparks back and forth across the living room. His sweater clashes chaotically with his hair.

“You’re late,” he says.

“I know.”

In the kitchen, the stove is busy cooking something up for breakfast tomorrow morning. It hums tunelessly in Hermione’s voice. Ginny ignores it; goes to the fridge instead. She finds half of yesterday’s pie, and a fork in the drawer beside the humming stove.

“Up for grabs?” she says, showing the pie-plate to Ron.

“Why were you late?”

She cuts the pie with the side of her fork, and her ear twinges where Malfoy touched it.

“Ginny, you’re soaked. Where the hell have you been?”

“What have you heard about Malfoy, lately?” she says, feigning casual disinterest.

“ _Draco?”_

“No, _Hermione._ Yes, you idiot. Draco.”

“Why d’you want to know?”

She concentrates on the way her fork slides through the crust of the pie. “I ran into him. By the pub in town.”

“You weren’t drinking there again--”

She cuts him off. Ron’s not allowed to boss her around: he lost that privilege a long time ago. “I thought he was in Bulgaria, for the Ministry.”

“He came back a few months ago, I think. His assignment ended.”

Ginny takes another bite of the pie.

“You should be careful with him,” Ron says, eyeing her. “They say he’s not quite right. Since the war.”

“Fucking war.”

Ron’s voice is sharp. “He’s no great loss, in the scheme of things. I don’t want you feeling sorry for him.”

“Harry forgave him.”

Ron looks at her, and she realizes it might be the first time she’s said Harry’s name in over two months.

“Well, Harry was the best of us,” he says.

She can’t deny it. That’s the trouble, really.

“I should go up to bed,” she says, and she chokes back the big lump in her throat. It’s gotten so used to being choked back that it goes without a fight. “Sorry I made you wait up.”

“You’re good.”

She hands him her plate, because he’s got a hand outstretched, and he takes it. He licks it clean and she grimaces at him.

“Go up,” he says. “I’ve got the dishes.”

She’s caught in a sudden proud surge of affection, this instant press of love like, _This is my brother. He’s mine._ She hugs him, fierce, and an arm comes up around her shoulders automatically. She can feel him smiling into her hair.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you, too.”

She goes upstairs to bed.


	2. two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for sexual content, strong language, semi-bad life choices that I won't bother to redeem until later, and alcohol and the consumption of it. I should have warned for language and alcohol in the last chapter, too.
> 
> This is where the amount of stuff I've pre-written ends. From now on, updates depend on how motivated and/or insane I am.

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Just give me a second--I can explain--”

“There’s nothing to explain. You were drunk and so you said some shit that you probably wouldn’t have said otherwise, but we both know that shit would still’ve been there.”

Ginny takes a breath because it’s hard to walk fast and still rattle off words like that, machine gun and spitfire.

Malfoy says, “I drink too much.”

“Clearly.”

“I think you do, too. You’re down here, aren’t you?”

“I don’t assault random girls in the street. And I don’t tell them I’m glad their boyfriends are--”

She stops. She can’t say it. The word in the pit of her stomach is as effective as a Tongue-Tying Curse, or a Full Body-Bind.

“I--” Malfoy says, and then stops.

“Can you leave me alone?”

“No.”

“What do you  _ want?” _

“I want to apologize,” he says. “I want to say that I’m sorry he’s gone. Because I think--”

He stops. Reconsiders. 

“I might have to be drunker, to say that.”

Ginny looks at him.

“Buy me a drink, then,” she says, impulsively. Her tone’s rough and clipped and she’s glad because it shows none of the pain, raw muscle through skin, the life in Hermione’s stomach like it’s been traded.

Malfoy’s eyes open wide.

“A drink,” he says. Like it’s a foreign concept.

“Muggle beer, preferably. Or something equally as disgusting.”

He says, “I don’t have--I don’t have any Muggle money.”

She fishes a couple of five-dollar bills out of her pocket. They float aimlessly when she tosses them to him. He fumbles to catch them, to scrape the stragglers off the ground, and she’s glad he didn’t reach for them. She doesn’t want to touch his hand.

 

The bar’s almost empty. There’s some half-decent Muggle band playing in the corner, and Ginny watches Malfoy watching them.

“Drunk enough, yet?” she says.

He looks back at her.

“You were going to say something,” she says. “When you were drunker.”

He shakes his head and reaches for his beer. His hand doesn’t tremble because he’s a fucking Malfoy and he holds his alcohol well, like a gentlemen. Like someone used to high-society mead, and lots of it.

“Not yet,” he says. “Not yet.”

 

“And now?”

The bar’s filled in a bit, locals and tourists alike. Ginny’s gone through a few beers. She can’t remember exactly how many, but it’s safe to say the total’s a damn sight more than she usually downs.

“Weasel,” Malfoy slurs, and then: “Ginny.”

“Don’t call me either of those.”

“Weasley.”

“That’s right.”

“Fuck me, and I’ll tell you.”

She’s calm in her rejection. She knew this sort of thing was likely to happen.

“You’re beautiful,” Malfoy says.

“And you’re a monster when you’re drunk.”

“I know.”

He can’t quite focus on her. 

“Blaise Zabini fancied you,” he says.

“Did he?”

She vaguely remembers a tall Slytherin boy. A sneering sort of smile. Although they all had sneering sorts of smiles, back then, when there wasn’t anything more important than Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry and the way the jewels fell into the hourglass.

“Wouldn’t admit it,” Malfoy says.

He’s had more beers than her. He’s drunker, but not significantly so.

“But we knew it. He’d look at you. Follow you.”

She stands up. It doesn’t make quite the impression she wanted, given as she’s swaying on her feet.

“I’m leaving,” she says, sharply.

“Don’t.”

He looks up at her.

Her ear burns.

“Please,” he says, and then, “I loved him, too.”

The words shake her. Though she'd suspected.

“I know,” she tells him.

“Did you know that was what I was going to say?”

“I thought it might be. And--that’s why you want me. Because I’m like him.”

“Are you expecting me to deny it?”

She pauses.

“I don’t know what I’m expecting, anymore,” she says, very quietly.

“Then--”

His hand is on her waist before she can move, and when it’s there she finds she doesn’t really mind all that much. He puts the other one up, too, and she looks at him and his face is hard and he stands kind of all in one motion until they’re eye to eye.

“Kiss me,” he says.

So she does. He tastes like cigarette smoke and it’s like he’s falling apart in her arms.

They leave the bar without another word.

 

They don’t make it to Malfoy’s bed. He shoulders her up against the wall beside his apartment door and she takes her shirt and bra off and then he’s on his knees, working the zipper of her jeans with his teeth.

She knots her fingers in his hair and  _ pulls. _

“Fuck,” he says, muffled around her fly, “fuck;  _ Ginny-- _ ”

The zipper catches and he helps her wiggle out of her jeans, then her underwear. He presses two fingers to her center.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He crooks his fingers until she’s wet enough to slick his hand. When he stands, shuffling out of his clothes, his eyes have this glint to them, like steel or glass. He’s not at all like Harry, and she wonders why she’s still here.

Then he positions himself at her entrance, his weight flattening her against the wall, and she knows exactly why she’s here.

 

“How do you deal with it?”

They’ve moved to the bed, and she’s lying curled up against his side, her face in his shoulder. He smells less like cigarettes and more like sex.

“Deal with what?” she says.

He gestures, and his bicep shifts against her. “How do you even--stay upright?”

“Sometimes, I don’t.”

“I thought I hated him,” he tells her. “For so long. All the way until sixth year.”

“Well, it’s a fine line,” she says; “love and hate.”

“And then I couldn’t get him out of my head.”

She wants to say,  _ Me, too _ .

She wants to cry, but she’s cried too much.

“Did you fuck me because you hate me?” he asks her. “Or because you want to remember him?”

“Maybe a little of both.”

He says, “You were there.”

This is not how this was supposed to go. It was supposed to be a quick fuck. An escape. A drink with an old enemy, and kisses rough enough to feel like bites.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” she says.

“Was it painless?”

Her breath catches.

“I’m sorry,” he says quickly, but he’s not, not really; she can see that hunger in his eyes again, that steel-glass glint of curiosity.

“It wasn’t painless,” she says. “It wasn’t even close.”

He looks at the tattoo on his forearm: instinctive, a twitch, a giveaway. Death goes hand in hand with that tattoo. She wonders if he still flinches when someone says the Dark Lord’s name.

“Fuck you,” she whispers.

“You already did,” he says, tiredly.

“No.” She pulls away from him. Swings her legs over the side of the bed. She’s naked--feels like a stripper in front of him but she won’t back down. “ _ No.  _ You loved him and yet you joined them anyway--you--”

She runs out of words to hate him with.

“I was scared,” he says, and it’s a conversation less about Harry, now, and more about Malfoy.

_ (Draco) _

Malfoy.

“I was scared, too. We all were.”

“I wasn’t brave like you.”

“I wasn’t brave, either. And I loved him same as you. I just did what was  _ right. _ ”

“Some of us don’t fucking  _ know  _ what’s right.”

“You  _ BASTARD. _ ”

She’s screaming, now, hating herself for coming here, for screwing Draco Malfoy against a wall. For acting like Harry can be replaced.

_ Harry was the best of us. _

Malfoy gets out of bed and goes into the hall and for a second she thinks he’s just walked out and she’s readying herself to stride naked after him and give him a piece of her mind, but then he comes back in with his arms full of her clothes.

“I am a bastard,” he says. “I’m every ugly name you can throw at me.”

Forearm turned up: raw and honest and she thinks maybe he feels it too, this pain in every piece of her, this emptiness between her stomach and her ribs.

She wonders if she’s still drunk. And if he is. And she thinks that the drunkenness is not why she fucked him: not at all. 

“Here,” he says, and he gives her the clothes.

 

It’s a fourteen-block walk back to Ron and Hermione’s house, but she takes it in just under ten minutes. She doesn’t know she’s crying until she brushes her teeth in the mirror and watches tears trickle silently down her face.

 

She spends the next day holed up in her room, nursing a vicious hangover and casting petty spells to turn her windows opaque. Downstairs, the stove sings Beethoven’s Ninth, now in Ron’s joyfully offkey tenor.

Around noon, there’s a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Ginny says, flat.

Hermione holds the tray she’s carrying out to Ginny without a word.

“Aren’t you going to ask what’s wrong with me?” Ginny says, taking the tray, because she know she’s got tear tracks still smeared across her face.

Hermione says, “Did he hurt you?”

“No. I think that’s the problem.”

Hermione nods. She steps further into the room and closes the door behind her. 

“How did you know?” Ginny asks her.

“Ron told me you met him. By the bar.”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t drink too much, did you?”

“Maybe,” Ginny admits, and she tilts her head back, almost relieved, to let Hermione touch her forehead and check her pupils and wipe a bit of the tear-crust off her cheeks.

“What  _ did  _ he do, then, if he didn’t hurt you?”

“He asked too much. About Harry. And--I don’t know. His tattoo. I flipped.”

Hermione eases herself onto the bed beside Ginny, folding her hands around the swell her stomach makes.

“But it was nice,” Ginny says. She feels a little blank: a little empty. Like she’s been cried out. “And I don’t know why.”

Leaning up against Hermione’s shoulder, she can feel the baby pushing itself into her collarbone. One life neatly traded for another. 

Hermione says, “Did you--”

“Yeah, we fucked.”

“Was that the nice part?”

Ginny closes her eyes and nods.

But it wasn't the only nice part; not really.

“So just try to separate it, then,” Hermione says, very quietly. “The nice part from the rest. Just think of it like a one-night stand.”

But it won’t be a one-night stand. She thinks she knows that, even now, still smelling of him. His scent will be on her pillows, tonight, and if she goes to the Muggle bars again, she’ll find him. She'll go home with him again, no questions asked or answered.

(She puts her hand over the space Hermione’s daughter fills.

Her niece. Ron says they’ll name her Rose.)

“Yeah, all right,” Ginny says, as convincingly as she can. “I’ll try.”


	3. three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for explicit sexual content, bad language, implied/referenced character death. Mention of blood and gore, not described explicitly.

She finds a stack of old _Prophets_ in Ron and Hermione’s basement. They go back as far as the war, and she wonders if Hermione knows they’re here.

Sitting on the basement floor, legs crossed, knees pressed almost-flat to the cold tile, she reaches for one dated the August the year before. She’s not sure what she’s hoping for. Closure, perhaps. An explanation. Something that will keep her out of the Muggle bars.

 _Malfoy_ blazes at her from the seventh page.

_In the aftermath of Lucius Malfoy’s sentence…_

_Sources say Draco Malfoy, 20, is still reeling from the loss of “the father he loved”…_

_Narcissa Malfoy refuses to acquire divorce papers…_

_The Malfoy heir will leave on Monday to begin his position in Bulgaria working for the Committee of the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures…_

She finds another paper, from just a month ago. Harry’s all over the first four pages, his name repeated again and again. And his smile. Shining out at her from one portrait after another.

She says, out loud, “You bastard.”

And that’s two men she’s called bastards, in as many days.

Suddenly crying. Just choking and fear and she can’t hold herself upright. She sags down until she’s eye level with the papers. Then farther, a mess of red hair and newsprint. She imagines herself just sinking right into the floor.

 

“Going out?” Hermione says, three days later.

“Yes,” Ginny says.

She’s wearing her most provocative top--a slim red slip of a thing with a neckline that ends somewhere between her breasts--and she can sense, even with her back turned, Hermione’s disapproving gaze.

“Date?” Hermione says.

“No.”

“Don’t stay out too late.”

“Yes, Mum.”

“Don’t drink too much.”

“Yes, Mum.”

“Are you wearing eyeliner?”

“Yes, Mum.”

“You look absurd.”

“I feel empowered,” Ginny says, and, finishing the wings of her eyeliner in the mirror, she does a little flex.

 

But she does not _act_ empowered.

He’s in the first Muggle bar she enters. Sitting at the counter with his head hunched over a drink. When she nears him, treading quietly, she can smell firewhiskey. He must have Transfigured the beer.

“Malfoy,” she says, sitting beside him.

He looks up, and his eyes are red but he isn’t drunk.

“Weasley,” he says.

“I wanted to ask you a few things,” she says.

And she wills herself to keep her voice still. Calm. _Empowered._

“I didn’t think you’d ever want to see my face again.”

“Bulgaria,” she says.

He stiffens. “What about it?”

“The Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He shifts his wand from his sleeve down into his hand. Transfigures his firewhiskey to wine, and then, absently, to water.

“I killed a lot of them,” he says. “There was a woman who bred these creatures. Like Hagrid.”

She appreciates that he’s mature enough to leave his customary _oaf_ out of Hagrid’s title.

“But they were monsters. They’d rip wizards to shreds in a heartbeat. I killed so many, I forgot about other things. I always smelled like blood. My mother hated me for it. She said it was a crude way of dealing with my problems.”

Ginny thinks that killing beasts would be a perfectly effective way of dealing with her problems.

She says, “And then, when you came back--”

“ _Potter,_ ” he says, like a curse.

“Harry.”

“Such a stupid name _._ ”

Ginny says, “He was like a test of how good it’s possible for the human spirit to be.”

“Of how _stupid_ it’s possible for the human spirit to be.”

“Stupidly brave.”

He doesn’t argue.

“Look,” she says. “I wanted to--”

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t apologize.”

“How did you know I was going to--”

“Don’t.”

He puts his finger to her lips, and she lifts a hand up and grasps it. Brings his whole palm to her mouth.

“Weasley--” he says, pulling away. His pupils are blown.

“I was digging through old _Prophets._ I found a shit-ton of headlines with his name in them.”

“Is that why--”

“I don’t need a why.”

 _Empowered,_ she thinks, and almost laughs. If only Hermione knew.

What a fucking mess of a one-night stand.

“You’re not drunk,” he says.

“Neither are you.”

They stand without discussing it. Without considering what this will mean. He spells a couple of pound notes onto the bar, and they spiral down like shotgunned birds.

 

This time, they make it to his bedroom. And it’s slower. They take their time. Ginny sits on the edge of the bed to cast the protection spell, and Malfoy takes off her shoes. Then her socks and jeans.

When they’re both naked, their clothes hunched in a pile on the floor, Malfoy props himself on his elbows over Ginny and looks her in the eye.

“Stupidly brave,” he says, and she doesn’t know if he’s talking about Harry or her.

He kisses down her neck and her collarbone and into the hollow between her breasts. Then across her sternum to her waist. He guides himself down until his chest is supported by her thighs and hips.

She says, “I don’t hate you.”

And she knows it’s true. Though she doesn’t know why.

He kisses her navel, and her pelvis. Reaches for her shoulders and brings himself up until the tip of his cock pushes at her entrance. She remembers how it felt last time: hot and wet and heavy and _right._ Not at all like Harry. Like a memory you can’t reconcile with a dream.

“Weasley,” he says, “Ginny. I’m fucking falling apart.”

She closes her eyes as he slides into her. Fills her up. So perfectly, exquisitely Draco Malfoy. Polished and jagged: a study in contradictions. Unedited. She can taste the street on his lips, the dampness from the dip between his collarbones.

A compromise. Softening thrusts. His groan shakes them both, and she feels her nipples peak.

“Fuck,” she says, too softly, and then louder, louder, _“Fuck, fuck, Draco, don’t stop--”_

And then she’s shuddering into climax, legs coming up around his waist. He moans a long, drawn-out note, easing out of her until there’s nothing but this empty aching heat inside her core. Hot breath and stutter heartbeats and _oh._

Somewhere, Hermione is shaking her head.

 

When Ginny wakes up, Malfoy’s gone.

She thinks for a moment that it was a dream, that she’s back in her cozy room at Ron’s, sleeping off another hangover. But her head feels clear, and the pillows she’s buried into are firmer than hers.

“Malfoy?” she calls.

“Weasley.”

His footsteps come padding down the hall, and then he’s sitting on the mattress beside her, looking down. His face is bloodless.

“My mother called,” he says.

“What did she say?”

He closes his eyes, and his whole body shakes. A leaf in the wind. “My father,” he says. “He’s gone.”


	4. four

Once she’s sat up, reasserted herself, held him until the trembling slows a little, she tells him she should go home. 

“No,” he says, and clutches at her hand. “No.”

(And that look he gives her. She knows what it’s like to lose and lose, and lose again.)

So instead of going home, she gets up and slips her clothes back on, and goes down to the kitchen to make breakfast. There’s not much in Malfoy’s refrigerator. She transfigures a potholder into a box of cereal, and pours them each a bowl.

“Will you come with me?” Malfoy says.

“To see your mother?”

“Yes.”

“Why--” She stops. “That’s not a good idea.”

He closes his eyes, and she knows he knows.

“It’s Harry,” she says. “That’s the--that’s the only reason I’m here at all.”

He takes the cereal from her, and sinks into a seat at the table. When he takes a bite, it’s slow. Robotic, blank.

“Maybe it’s not,” he says.

She tries not to think about the way he pushed into her, last night. His heat and weight and the way he said her name. And:  _ I’m fucking falling apart. _

“Maybe that’s how it started,” he says.

“That  _ was  _ how it started.”

“Yes.”

He puts down his spoon and watches her eat. 

“Draco,” she says, covering her mouth with a hand. “Your mother hates me.”

“My mother is  _ grieving. I’m  _ grieving.”

“I--”

“I can’t do this alone.”

She remembers Ron and,  _ They say he’s not quite right. Since the war. _

(But then, they’re all fucked-up. Shaking hands and broken hearts. And Harry’s glasses twisted like metal skeletons.)

“I’ll need something nicer,” she says. A concession. A giving-in. “To wear.”

Malfoy says, quietly, “Thank you.”

Ginny finishes her cereal.

 

She transfigures a couple of Malfoy’s robes into a long black dress. She changes in his room beside him, and when she’s slipped free of her top and jeans, he goes to her and takes her in his arms.

He smells like sweat and sex and a little like grief, too: that unwashed, salty scent. She holds his head close against her breast and lets him cry.

 

“Are you Ginevra?”

“Just Ginny, please.”

“Of course. Draco told me you’d be coming.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“As I am for yours.”

Ginny looks at Narcissa Malfoy and fully understands, for the first time in her life, about different kinds of strength. About how one strength is going with a boy you’ve despised for years to mourn his Death Eater father. And about how another is welcoming a girl your family wants to kill just for the blood in her veins.

“Tea?” Narcissa says.

“I’ll make it, Mother,” Malfoy says.

Ginny pulls out a chair for Narcissa, and Malfoy points his wand at the teakettle until it starts to hiss.

“I understand that this could be a delicate question,” Narcissa says, “but are you and my son--together?”

Malfoy levitates the kettle off the stove. Pulls teabags one by one from an upper cabinet. Ginny can see the discomfort in the back of his neck, the draw of his shoulderblades. She waits for him to answer, to interject with a steadfast denial, but he says nothing.

“No,” she says. “We’re not.”

 

Malfoy takes her home, afterwards. Malfoy Manor has been disconnected from the Floo network, Apparition bans imposed, so they fly. It’s only Ginny’s second time on a broomstick, since Harry. The first time was flying from Malfoy’s apartment to the manor.

“You don’t look scared,” Malfoy says, when they’re covered in cloud layer.

It’s freezing, and Ginny wishes she’d brought a wrap to throw over her sleeveless dress. She shakes her head. “I’m not.”

“I’d have thought--”

“You’d have thought wrong.”

There’s silence for a long beat, and then his voice from the fog. Soft. “Are you mad at me?”

“Why would I be?”

“My father gave you the diary.”

Ginny closes her eyes. “That’s not exactly your fault.”

“I made you come.”

“You didn’t  _ make  _ me do anything. You underestimate my strength.”

She swerves up out of the clouds, suddenly raw, and he follows. He says, “My mother--she asked--”

“That’s not your fault, either.”

“We’re not together,” he says, except he makes it a question.

“We’re not,” she says.

“Because of Potter.”

“Because of Harry.”

There’s a pause. Somewhere in the distance, far below, a train bellows. Ginny thinks, wistfully, of the Hogwarts Express.

“This all seems rather stupid,” Malfoy says.

“What do you mean?”

“You got your one-night stand. We remembered him. We drank too much and fell apart. Why are you still here?”

Ginny closes her eyes. Then opens them, because even though she’s not scared, the memory of the accident still pulses at the back of her skull.

“I wish I knew the answer,” she says. “Do you?”

“I know why  _ I’m  _ still here,” Malfoy says. “But I don’t really think that’s what you want to know.”


	5. five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for lots of swearing (what else is new?), reference to childbirth, Ginny and Draco's general lack of coping skills, and non-explicit sexual content.

“Where the _ fuck _ have you been?”

Ginny pauses in the doorway. Ron’s standing in the kitchen, strands of hair redefining themselves as individuals. His robes puddle off his shoulders.

“What’s the matter?” she says.

_ “Hermione!” _

Ginny feels her heart drop. “Is she okay? Is the baby okay?”

“She’s  _ in labor, _ you--”

Ginny gapes. “Oh my God.”

“I need to get her stuff together--I was just there, and she asked for--I need to--”

“Ron. Calm down.”

“I will  _ not  _ calm down. I’m going to be a  _ father.  _ Fuck, and Harry isn’t even here to see it.”

He opens his arms, and she steps into them. She’s not sure if he’s crying or not, because her own tears are too thick to see. 

 

Later, sitting beside Hermione’s bed, baby Rose finally silent in her arms, Ginny thinks she understands.

“Understand what?” Hermione says softly, and she sounds so sweet and concerned that Ginny nearly starts crying again.

“Malfoy,” she says.

“That's one hell of a big thing to understand.”

“I mean, why I'm still. With him.”

Hermione blinks. Disapproval and then resigned acceptance. “You went back.”

“It was just because of Harry. Because--” Ginny swallows. “Because he loved him, too.”

Fuck hate and love. And fuck that tiny line. Fuck the gap they toed, every day, every year. Until they fell, side by side and silent.

“Was that your understanding? That he loved Harry?”

“No. I knew that. He told me.” Ginny kisses Rose’s forehead. “He asked me, today, why I was still there. Because we'd both gotten what we wanted.”

“Did he tell you why  _ he  _ was still there?”

“Indirectly,” Ginny says, and feels foolish, because what if his knowing look didn't mean what she thinks it did? “I thought he'd fallen in love with all the parts of me Harry touched. But he thought it was more.”

“And so your understanding?”

“I guess we both just have broken places. Big shitty broken places. And whatever's broken inside of us calls out to the other.”

Hermione says, “You're a poet.”

“He makes me feel whole.”

“I think Harry would have approved.”

Ginny snorts, and Rose stirs feebly in her arms. “I think,” she says, “that Harry would have laughed his fucking ass off.”

 

She says as much to Malfoy, two days after Rose is born. They're at his apartment, drinking butterbeer on the floor of his room, and Ginny has her feet propped up in his lap.

When she's explained about the broken places, he sits there looking at her with this expression on his face that might be awe.

“What?” she says.

“Are you a Legilimens?” he asks her, and she laughs.

“Far from it.”

“Broken places,” he says. “That's why you're still here?”

She shrugs.

“Well, it's not very romantic.”

She scoffs.  _ “We're  _ not very romantic.”

“We’re fucked-up,” he says, matter-of-factly.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He looks at her.

“We’re fucked-up,” he says, “and you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.”

 

_ Dear Harry, _

_ Do you know something? _

_ I have never once used the word “dead” to describe you. I have never once been that brave. _

_ So here goes. _

_ You're dead. You're dead and gone and there's nothing any of us can do about it. You fell from a broomstick one hundred and fifteen feet in the air and landed like a rag doll in a London street. _

_ After twenty years of surviving Voldemort, dementors, Death Eaters, spells--you died by falling off your broom. One-on-one Quidditch in the autumn sky. _

_ What a cruel sense of humor fate seems to have. _

_ Love, _

_ Gin  _

_ P.S. Did you know Draco Malfoy was in love with you? In fact, he still is. We both are. Except we’re a little bit in love with each other, too. I don't really know how that happened, but I think you'd laugh if you knew. I think you'd laugh so hard you couldn't breathe. _

 

She shows the letter to Malfoy, and he smiles. He touches the tattoo on his forearm, and for the first time there's no revulsion at the sight of it. It's just a fact. Ink that belongs on his skin.

She kisses the tattoo, that night, when they're so tangled up in sheets and each other that it's unclear where Ginny begins and Malfoy ends. She drags her tongue across the swirl of it, soothes it with her lips. Then, when Malfoy moves against her, she bites down on the grinning skull and snake. She leaves her own mark there instead.


	6. six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm rather unsatisfied with this chapter, but I wanted to get something up before I lost all motivation to continue.
> 
> Warnings for language, fighting (nonphysical). Tame compared to other chapters.

“I think you should write one, too,” she says, watching Malfoy dress for his father’s funeral.

“Write what?” he says.

“A letter. For Harry.”

His name leaves her mouth seamlessly, now. Like Fred’s. Like Tonks’. Like everyone else she’s lost. Funny how time does that: smooths out the gaps and knits over the wounds.

Malfoy’s smile is dryly amused. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

He straightens his tie. “I don’t know what I’d say.”

“Just say what you said to me.” She searches for an explanation of why she feels so strongly that this is the right thing for them to do. “Just--it’ll give you closure.”

 _“Closure_ is a broad term.”

She frowns at him.

“Will you hand me my cufflinks?”

“You rich entitled asshole. _Cufflinks_.”

But she gets the cufflinks anyway, and presses them into his hand. Scratchy fingers and a palm marred by cigarette burns. As far as she can tell, he’s quit smoking, but the scars remain.

“Are you ready?” he says, as he’s fastening them.

“Ready?”

He eyes her like she’s stupid. So much of that Slytherin pureblood still left.

“For the funeral,” he says.

And:

“You _are_ coming.”

“Malfoy…”

“Draco,” he says, tightly, implying, _I thought we were past that._

“I’m not coming. I thought you knew.”

“You never said.”

She looks at her bare feet. Painted toenails: blue and white. She can see him, out of the corner of her eye, straightening his tie again. His mouth is pressed all terse and close.

“I'd have thought--”

“What _would_ you have thought?”

She struggles to keep her voice under control. “Your father planted Voldemort’s diary in my books. He was a Death Eater with no regrets, no compulsion. He tried to argue that everything he did, he did for you, but we all know how well that turned out. Your mother was the only one--”

_“Shut up.”_

She looks at him.

“Don't talk about my father that way.”

“Draco--”

He holds up a hand. Cufflinks glint. “No.”

“What did you want me to say?” she says.

“I just wanted you to come _with_ me.”

“Well, I'm not coming. Harry wouldn't have gone.”

“Harry is _dead.”_

_“And so is your father!”_

Malfoy closes his eyes. She can see the pain in lines around his mouth as he reaches for the dark robes hanging on his door.

“Get out,” he says, very softly.

She gets up.

“I don't want to see you again.”

They stare at each other, and for an instant, Ginny can see his lies. He wants to see her again. He wants to pin her to the wall like he did the first time. He wants to slide into her, sleek and rough all at once. He wants to sit with her feet in his lap, drinking butterbeer and smiling in the dark.

Then his face closes. And it's truth, hard and certain. He says it again, or maybe it's just in her head.

“I don't want to see you again.”

“Fine,” she says, and slams the door on her way out.

 

News comes to Ron and Hermione’s house, four days later, of the funeral. A bloodless affair. Sparsely attended. No tears were shed.

The word is that Draco Malfoy refused to be his father’s honor guard down to the sheltered grave in the lawn of Malfoy Manor. He left before the ceremony ended.

This shouldn't make Ginny glad, but somehow it still does.

 

“Malfoy,” Hermione says.

“Mmm,” Ginny says, feigning interest in Rose’s sleeping form.

“Don't fuck with me,” Hermione says. “You haven't gone out to the city for a week, now.”

“Kicking me out?”

“I'm just wondering what happened to that pretty red shirt you have.”

Ginny says, “One day, you want me fucking him. Next day, you hate him.”

“Seems like that's your pattern, too.”

She isn't wrong, Ginny thinks, and hates it. Like Malfoy (like Harry) (like herself).

“The shirt’s at his apartment,” she says. Along with socks, a bra, and a pair of her favorite jeans.

“You should go get it.”

“That would go over well.”

Hermione quirks an eyebrow.

Ginny mimics: _“I don't want to see you again.”_

“What happened? To make him say that?”

“I refused to go to his father’s funeral.”

“Well, of course you did.”

“Exactly.”

Hermione shakes her head.

“My favorite jeans are there, too,” Ginny says.

She thinks of Harry. Blinking. Running his fingers through his hair. _I...well, I dunno. I don't see what the problem is. Just admit that you fought and that you're both assholes and then fuck some more._

“Owl him and tell him to send them over.”

Ginny says, “I don't want to talk to him.”

“Mmm,” Hermione says.

“I _don't.”_

“All right.”

“Don't give me that look.”

“I'm not giving you any look.”

Ginny swears. _“Okay._ I'll go and get my stupid jeans.”

“What a lovely conclusion to have come to all on your own,” Hermione says, placidly, and Ginny feels the urge to throw something against the wall.


	7. seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOOK! An update!
> 
> I'm much more satisfied with this chapter than the last, although it's pretty short. This fic is definitely drawing to an end, though. I've got maybe one or two more chapters in me. Thanks to everyone who's stuck with me so far. :)
> 
> Warnings for language, dubious problem-solving, discussion of major character death. You'll be fine if you survived the others.

“I told you--”

“I know what you told me.”

She stares him down in the worn-down light, moon creeping in around his door to linger in her long red hair. She can feel her heart beating. Taste her pulse like sour paper in the back of her throat.

“Your father ruined my life,” she tells him.

Malfoy’s head comes down. Crushed pride and defeat. “I know.”

“I know you know. You refused to bury him.”

He tilts his head up again, steely and fierce. “It wasn’t because of you.”

She almost smiles, because, oh, they’re exactly the same. Denying attachments. Saving face.

“Of course not,” she says. “I didn’t think it was.”

He lets her step into the apartment anyway, though: reaches around her for the doorknob and pulls the door gently closed. If he put his other hand out, she’d be encircled in his arms. She holds too still, waiting, but then his arm drops back to his side.

“I just came for my clothes,” she says.

“Just.”

“Yes. Just.”

He nods. “All right. They’re in the bedroom.”

She follows him through the halls into his room, and it looks the same. Her clothes are folded in a neat stack atop his desk. His pillow is rumpled. All of a sudden, she wants to cross the room and pick it up and press it to her face. She wants the smell of him--smoky still, hard and rough and ragged--in her nose.

He picks up the clothes for her, and she takes them. Their hands brush.

“Is that it?” he says.

“That’s it.”

Except it’s not it. 

She sees Harry’s face again, and Hermione’s. Ron’s and Rose’s. All amused bewilderment.  _ Just take him back. Just fuck some more.  _ Variations on a theme. She thinks about a painter who would do the series of Ginny and Draco:  _ Insecurities in Green.  _ Green because of Slytherin, and Harry’s eyes.

She feels like she’s falling. Has to crouch to catch her breath.

“Weasley?”

She looks up at him.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she says, but it’s a lie.

He reaches out, then stops himself. And then she can’t stop looking at his hands: his well-trimmed nails, his callused palms. The cigarette burns. She pictures him chain-smoking. Here. In Bulgaria. Night after night. Cigarette after cigarette. Burning down.

He says, “I wrote the letter.”

“You did?”

“I did.”

“Can I see it?”

“Will you be okay, if I run and get it?”

She realizes she’s still crouching, shivering, shoulders pulled up like a house-elf’s on the dingy carpet of his apartment. The carpet where she’d toss her clothes before they fucked.

She drags herself to her feet.

“Sit on the bed,” he says. “I’ll be back.”

He leaves, and she sits on the bed. When she can no longer hear his footsteps, she picks up his pillow and pushes her nose against it. It smells like she remembers: sweat and boy and alcohol and a little like shampoo. Hers. The flowery stuff she’s been using since she was twelve years old.

“I haven’t washed it, yet.”

He appears in the doorway with a paper in hand. Expression naked as he watches her.

“That’s sort of disgusting,” she says.

“I didn’t want to forget.”

“You told me--”

“I know what I told you.”

And he gives her a smile. This small, sharp thing. Like his outer shell is breaking off in fragments. He crosses the room and eases onto the bed beside her and lays the paper in her lap.

_ Dear Potter, _

_ You cursed my guts out half a dozen times but guess I did the same to you, except I did it bc I loved you and it was the only way I could think of to get your attention to make you notice me bc love and hate’s a fine line. Thats what Ginny says, yeah I was with her for a while then we got in a fight and she left and I miss her like fucking crazy but I don’t know how to get her back. anyway I know you didn’t love me bc of secktumsempra and the blood in Murtle’s bathroom. But thats okay, the not loving I mean, bc I loved you enough for both of us and I think I also love Ginny enough for both of us. Even though she hates me a hell of a lot now and you would be even more mad at me than usual bc I stole your gf on top of everything else well suck it Potter because honestly I FELT THAT WAY TOO that you were stealing everything, fucking everything from me and all I wanted was for you to give it back. just give Me a little of it back. But I didn’t want you to die, I never did. I miss you enough for both of us. Fucking idiot. Falling off a broomstick, I was always a great flier and I could have taught you if things went better and then maybe you wouldn’t be dead but on the other hand I wouldn’t have ever kissed Ginny or sat with her in my room drinking butterbeer and talking about you and maybe that was worth everything. Every little tiny awful fucking bit. _

_ Love, Draco Malfoy  _

When she’s done, she looks at him, and there’s this feeling in her chest like the way it felt to ride a broomstick for the first time since Harry’s death.

“It’s hard to understand,” he says. “I wrote it while I was drunk. There’s no real order. Or grammar. Or spelling. But I thought I might as well--”

She kisses him.

“I’m getting tired of pity sex,” she tells him, when they’ve separated, “but that seemed like the right thing to do.”

“I don’t think any of this has been pity sex.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She kisses him again.

“Hate sex, maybe.”

“Or just sex.”

“I like you, Weasley.”

“I like you too, Malfoy.”

“Can we not do this stupid fighting thing anymore?” 

“Okay,” she says, and she kisses him a third time, pressing close, hands on his waist, shoving him back into the headboard and the wall. “Okay.”


	8. nine letters from the living

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for language, mentions of sexual content, and a general cheerful Malfoy disrespect for the dead. 
> 
> Sorry it's been so long!

_ Dear Potter, _

_ I asked Ginny if she wanted to get married, and she scoffed and said no, we’ve only been together for a year and we’re always fighting. Then I asked her if she thought we’d break up, and she said no again. I asked her why, and she said she didn’t know. It just felt like forever. _

_ I wonder if it felt like forever when you loved her, or if it felt like a time stamp. Like an expiration date. _

_ (God, my last letter was a mess. You’ll ruin my reputation, Potter.) _

_ (Ginny says I’m posh on my good days and an asshole on my bad ones, and I’m inclined to agree. But at least I hold my alcohol better than she does.) _

_ I want it to be forever. Is that stupid? _

_ Love, _

_ Draco _

 

_ Dear Potter, _

_ That was supposed to be the last letter but it is currently three a.m. and I am in my own lovely private hell because Ginny’s sleeping next to me in this curled-up position and all I want to do is put my thumb over her pulse and wake her up and kiss her to pieces and hear her moan my name. I don’t think sinful thoughts about your ex-girlfriend were meant to be the contents of these stupid letters, but I have no one else to tell how beautiful and sexy and mysterious and funny and crazy I find her, so please bear with me. This will be the last one. Probably. _

_ Today we went flying across half the known world until my down-theres hurt so bad I had to stop. We landed in this little village full of old doddering Muggles and bought pastries at the market and Ginny teased me relentlessly because I’d never been in a Muggle market. She punched me in the arm, right on the Mark, when I told her she was my first for a lot of things. Didn’t even flinch when she realized what she’d touched. I think that’s good. I think that’s a step forward, or five. _

_ Also, she disappeared yesterday for a while and I have a suspicion that she went to visit my mother because when she came back, she smelled like the kind of high-end tea my mother drinks relentlessly, and she smiled a lot. Sometimes it’s hard to get Gin to smile (I’m sure you had no trouble, but we won’t go over this again), so when she does, it’s like… _

_ oh, fuck, Potter. I don’t know. I’m not a poet like you were. Can’t get the masses on my side. Managed to get Ginny on my side though, and that feels like enough. She doesn’t care that I’m not a poet, because I’m pretty sure she’s got enough poetry for the both of us. _

_ Love, _

_ Draco _

 

_ dear potter i dont like that even tho my father was an awful man i am still crying and crying and i cant stop and i cant show ginny bc she wont understand and i dont understand either fuck it potter help me i dont know why i feel like this like shit i fucking miss him and i dont know why _

 

_ Dear Potter, _

_ I’m sorry about the last letter. You can disregard that. _

_ I’m going to tell you something immensely stupid. I know you’ll laugh at me, but that’s okay. I laughed at you, plenty. That was kind of our coping mechanism. That and trying to get each other killed. _

_ The stupid thing is: I tried to send your letters. _

_ I tied them with string and bundled them up and wrote  _ Potter  _ on them and gave them to Luce and he took them and vanished for a day and then came back with all his feathers ruffled up the wrong way and some blood on his breast and the letters still in his claws. _

_ He looked at me like I was an idiot. I had to make Ginny untie the letters because he bit me when I tried. _

_ Love, _

_ Draco _

 

_ Dear Potter, _

_ I think I get now why I was crying for my father, although perhaps there’s nothing to get. I was crying for him because he was the only person ever besides my mother (and even she had a drug phase and checked out) who was always there for me. Always. _

_ Ginny said she could forgive my mother because everything she did, she did for me. But I kind of think that was true about my father, too.  _ _ He just didn’t know it. _

_ I haven’t brought this up with Ginny, seeing as the outcome of our last conversation about my father was less than ideal. I’m not trying to say he was good, either. He was a horrible person. I just think it’s possible for someone to be a horrible person and care a whole hell of a lot about someone else anyway. _

_ Take it from me, Potter. I’d know. _

_ Love, _

_ Draco _

 

_ Dear Potter, _

_ I asked Ginny to marry me. For real. With the ring and everything. It was a very nice ring, too.  _

_ She said no.  _

_ It didn’t really come as a surprise. I got up and put the ring in my pocket and made like I was going to go because I thought that meant we were over and then all of a sudden she came flying at me and knocked me over and kissed me so hard I forgot how to breathe. _

_ I asked her if she’d changed her mind. _

_ She said no. _

_ I asked her if she was planning on ever changing her mind. _

_ She said probably not. But then we had sex on the couch and in the shower and at the end of it she said maybe. Just not for a very long time. _

_ The sex was good, if you’re wondering. Very good. Steamy. Kinky. Better than anything you had with her, I’ll bet.  _

_ Face it, Potter. You just didn’t have the  _ passion.

_ Love, _

_ Draco _

 

_ Dear Potter, _

_ I visited two graves today. _

_ Ginny came to both. I didn’t even ask her along to the first one, which was my father’s. She stood all stony-faced a few paces away from the actual grave, but that was all right. It was crazy that she’d even come, so I didn’t mind if she wanted to glower from afar. _

_ I didn’t say anything out loud. But I put some flowers down and stood there and said some shit in my head, mostly about how I was never going to forgive him but also I wasn’t going to just hate blindly like a schoolboy (like I hated you). Then, after a while, Ginny came over and put her arm around me and we stood there together just breathing for a long, long time. _

_ After that we visited your grave. It was covered in flowers. I mean, I hope you don’t have pollen allergies or else you’ll be in hell year-round. Of course, you may have gone to hell anyway. Not that I believe in such things. Or that if I did you’d go. You were too good, Potter. That was the problem. _

_ Anyway, we sat in front of it and had a picnic and scared some dewy-eyed fangirls away, and after a bit when there was no one else there Ginny crumpled up her pumpkin pasty and chucked it at your headstone and called you a word I won’t repeat. We laughed. It was probably blasphemy but I think that if any two people have the right to be blasphemous, it’s us. _

_ Besides, you probably would have laughed. Although you were a very pious person, now that I think of it. You might have frowned. But I don’t really care. It was our afternoon. It belonged to us. _

_ Love, _

_ Draco _

 

_ Dear Potter, _

_ Ginny stole the ring and used it to propose to me. _

_ I didn’t actually give her a verbal answer, but from the contents of our morning I think she understands what I meant. _

_ I’m asking for your blessing, now. I don’t believe in signs but I could suspend disbelief for a little bit if you could, I don’t know, leave the sheets rumpled in the shape of a heart, or something. _

_ Come to think of it, they’re stiff enough after this morning to be shaped quite nicely. _

_ One more letter, I think, and then I’m done. This was closure and I’m nearing the end. The next time I write you, I’ll be Mr. Ginny Weasley. And I’ll be flaunting my marital status in your stuck-up little bachelor face. _

_ Love, _

_ Draco _


	9. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings for this one except language, and it's light.

“You’re not serious.”

“I am very, very serious.”

Ginny doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the expression on Draco’s face. Stunned disbelief. He fists handfuls of his hair and the ring glints gold below his knuckle.

“Well,” he says.  _ “Well.” _

“Are you upset?”

He looks at her. Something in her face must be pained, because his own sharp scowl softens. He slips his hands around her waist and draws her to him. 

“Upset?” he says.

“So you want this.”

“I do.” He kisses her, roughly. “It’s been a year. Two since we met.”

“That’s not very long,” Ginny says.

“Do you want this?”

She sighs into his chest. “I do. You know I do. But Ron’s going to kill me.”

“I’ll protect you,” Draco says. “Chivalry and all that.”

“You were a Slytherin.”

“I made a bad one.”

“You made an  _ excellent  _ one.”

“God,” he says, and steps away from her. “I was a mess. I still am. I need a cigarette, or a beer, or something. Why’d I quit?”

“For me,” she tells him. 

When he smiles at her, his eyes are a little sad. He puts his hand on her stomach and spreads his fingers, like he can somehow feel the baby inside. “It was all for you, Gin, wasn’t it?” he says. “Every last bit of it.”

 

They're terrible parents.

“You’re going to drop him,” Ginny says, hands covering her eyes--she can’t watch the slow dance Draco’s completing around the hospital room, their son cooing worriedly in his arms. “You’re going to fucking drop him, Draco--give him back--”

Draco swings the baby around in a maneuver that makes Ginny release a decidedly undignified squeak. “Don’t swear,” he chides. “You’re a mother now.”

“Give him to me,” she says, from behind slotted fingers, vertical bars. Terrified, but she can feel the smile pressing at the corners of her mouth.

He does.

“Are we naming him Harry?” he asks her, easing himself to the edge of her bed.

She looks at him, the baby’s face pressed against her cheek. “What?”

He blinks. “I just assumed--”

She shakes her head. “Harry is an ugly name.”

His smile is hesitant, then amused, then gleeful. Like a sliver of sun. He says, “It can’t be Lucius.”

“God,” Ginny says, “no. Can you imagine?”

 

“What are you doing, Daddy?”

“Writing a letter.”

“How do you do that?”

“Come up and I’ll show you.”

He lifts his son onto his knee. From the hallway, peeking in, Ginny ducks and hides a smile. 

“First, you write who it’s for. That’s here.”

He points, and Shay leans across him to see. 

“What does it say?”

“It says  _ Dear Potter.” _

Ginny’s throat closes up. She braces a hand on the doorway. Can’t look away from father and son, this little tableau, bent over a letter to the dead.

“Who’s Potter?”

“Mum’s never told you about Potter?”

“No.”

“Potter. Harry Potter.”

“Oh, Harry.”

“That’s right.”

“Why are you writing a letter to him? Mum said he’s dead.”

“He is dead.”

“The letter won’t get to him.”

“I know, Shay. I know.”

“Then why?”

Draco smiles this infinitely sad smile, looking down at the little boy in his Holyhead Harpies T-shirt and tattered jeans. He says, “Sometimes people do things that don’t really have a good explanation.”

“Like you and Mum.”

“Like--excuse me?”

“Like you and Mum. Mum says you are not really supposed to be married because you’re both crazy people. That’s something with no ex-pluh-nay-shun.”

“Um,” Draco says, articulately. “Um. Right. Like me and Mum.”

“Will you tell me what your letter says now?”

Draco picks the letter up.

_ “Dear Potter, _

_ “True to my word, I’m writing you to tell you all about how lovely it is to be Mr. Ginny Weasley.” _

“Your name’s Draco.”

“I know.”

“Not Ginny.”

“I know. It’s an expression.

“Oh.”

_ “For one thing, I wake up every morning to her _ ...um, sorry; one second... _ beautiful face.  _ Yeah. Beautiful.  _ Or her dulcet tones screaming at me from the kitchen to wake up and make our son breakfast.” _

“That’s me.”

“It is.

_ “Yes, our son. We had a kid. I suppose I’m a little overdue, writing to you. It’s been about three years since Shay was born and five since we were married. If you’re interested, we got married on the lawn of my mother’s house. It was mostly Weasleys. The _ \--oh, I can’t read that. Never mind.  _ It was mostly Weasleys. I didn’t cry, but Ginny did. Although she’ll say she didn’t.” _

“Mums don’t cry.”

“Yes, they do.”

“No, they don’t.”

_ “We’re horrible parents. We swear in front of Shay, let him watch these abominable Muggle movies, and tell him ghost stories before he goes to bed. I also may or may not have dropped him on his head as a baby, but he doesn’t know.  _ I guess now you do, though, huh?”

Shay pushes his head closer into Draco’s chest.

_ “He seems to have done all right, though. I’m just hoping he won’t end up like the twins. (One of his middle names is Frederick. The other is Remus, though, so I think he balances out pretty well.) _

_ “I’m happy, Potter. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to tell you that, but I am. I’m happier than I’ve ever been. The Dark Mark’s hardly there anymore: just a blot of a tattoo that’s faded over time. And Gin is still mind-blowing when we-- _ crap. Your mum would kill me. Don’t want to initiate that discussion right now.”

“What discussion?”

“Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter.

_ “And Shay. My son. Our son. _

_ “Damn you, Potter. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who could make me cry like this. Every letter I write, I’m this blubbering mess. Guess it’s the least you could do, after all those years I made your life hell. _

_ “This is the last letter. And I mean it, this time. _

_ “Goodbye, Potter. I love you. I’ll see you on the other side. _

_ “Love, Draco.” _

There’s a pause, and then Shay starts wiggling, headbutting his father’s chest and squirming to get off his lap. “Down,” he says. “Down, down.”

“No praise?”

“Dowwwwwwnnnnnnnnnn--”

Before the moan turns into a full-on tantrum, Draco hefts Shay into the air and swings him in a circle by his ankles, so he shrieks with delight. Ginny is sure her heart’s just dropped a mile, but she steps aside without complaint when they come through the doorway, Shay dangling upside down.

“Look, it’s Mum,” Draco says, and plants a kiss on Ginny’s lips.

“Mum! Mum!”

“Time for bed,” Ginny says. 

Shay pouts. “Come in and say goodnight to me.”

“Daddy’s going to put you to bed tonight, okay? I’ll be in in a bit.”

“You all right?” Draco says, flipping Shay right-side-up again and planting him upright between his legs.

“Yes,” Ginny says, and means it.

 

When they’ve gone down the hall and water’s started running in the washroom for a bath, Ginny slips into the seat Draco vacated and picks up his pencil. She adds a footnote under his signature and love.

_ Dear Harry, _

_ Just so you know, I didn’t cry. At the wedding.  _

_ But Draco did. _

_ Love, _

_ Gin _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we've reached the end. Thank you for sticking with me through the duration of this crazy fic. I can't tell you much I appreciate it. :)
> 
> If you liked this and want more like it, I have a Lily Evans/James Potter multichapter fic called "evans" and a couple of Rogue One series ("that was the future; this is the past" and "soft quiet moments"). I also have plenty of weird oneshots. And I'll probably write more Ginny/Draco, because they're a really difficult, amazing pair to navigate as a writer.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who left kudos, comments, or just dropped by and read a few lines.


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